Family
Pratt practiced plural marriage and had 12 wives, 30 children, and 266 grandchildren. In 2011, Pratt's living descendants were estimated to number 30-50,000. His first wife, Thankful Halsey Pratt, died following childbirth in March 1837.
Within two months, Pratt married his second wife, Mary Ann Frost Sterns, a widow. Joseph Smith later condemned "marrying in five or six weeks, or even in two or three months, after the death of their companion." Pratt persuaded Mary Ann to share his bed during his imprisonment in a Richmond, Missouri, jail; but after Pratt began practicing polygamy, they became estranged. Mary Ann finally divorced him in 1853. According to the authors Terry L. Givens and Matthew J. Grow, Pratt was often “dour and humorless,” with an “antisocial bent," and he could be remarkably insensitive in his relationships with his wives.
One of Pratt's grandsons, William King Driggs, was the father of the King Sisters. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor (2003–2007) and the 2012 Republican nominee for the U.S. presidency is one of Pratt's great-great-grandsons.
One of Pratt's great-great-great-grandsons is Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor and Ambassador to China, and an unsuccessful candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
Read more about this topic: Parley P. Pratt
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“Q: What would have made a family and career easier for you?
A: Being born a man.”
—Anonymous Mother, U.S. physician and mother of four. As quoted in Women and the Work Family Dilemma, by Deborah J. Swiss and Judith P. Walker, ch. 2 (1993)
“Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“Do not let your bachelor ways crystallize so that you can’t soften them when you come to have a wife and a family of your own.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)